First European Solar Power Tower

Thursday, 31 July 2008 14:47

The new plant, PS10 (Planta Solar 10), is the first commercial solar thermoelectric power plant in the world and has a peak capacity of 11MW - sufficient to generate 23 million kWh of electricity per year powering 6,000 homes and saving 18,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. The plant took four years to build with construction finishing at the end of 2005 and has so far cost 35 million Euro. Construction was led by Solucar, an Albengoa company.A second power tower, PS20 is being constructed which will produce around a peak of around 20MW of electricity. Construction began in October 2006.

PS10 is the first of a series of concentrated solar power plants which will total 300 MW of peak capacity by 2013 - enough to power almost 200,000 homes. The total cost of the project is in excess of 1.2 billion Euro.